"After a month of courtship and nest-building, two red-tailed hawks began patiently tending to three speckled eggs in April 2011. Given that red-tailed hawks are a common American species, the event would seem no more than a footnote in the rites of spring; but this nest happened to be on a 12thfloor window ledge of NYU’s Bobst Library, overlooking Washington Square Park in Manhattan."